


Advent

by JeanBiscuit



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-05
Updated: 2015-02-05
Packaged: 2018-03-10 14:00:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3292991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JeanBiscuit/pseuds/JeanBiscuit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hawke has left the Inquisition for Weisshaupt Fortress in the snowy Anderfels, leaving Fenris to cross the continent to follow her.  He was lying when he said he enjoyed it.</p><p>Various snippets of Hawke's time in Weisshaupt and Fenris' journey to meet up with her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Advent

**Author's Note:**

> wELL here is my debut into dragon age hell  
> i honestly don't know i should have fleshed this out a lot more but i kinda felt like i stretched it a bit thin as is  
> hawke and fenris totally meet up after inquisition what are you talking about

Weisshaupt was nothing like she had expected.

It was full to the brim with people who were more exhausted than she thought people could be.  There were endless battles in the lines around their eyes, screams in the creases at the corners of their mouths, nightmares resting on the tips of their tongues.  They looked at the new arrival with grudging sympathy.  Many did not know who she was.

That was comforting, in itself.

She introduced herself as Hawke, just Hawke, thank you, and they accepted it without question.  It was only over drinks later that evening, when they discovered that she, in fact, was not a Grey Warden, that they grew wary.  They sat her down in a rickety wood chair and demanded with voices cracked from too many battle cries, “Why are you here?”

And so she explained, carefully, slowly, dodging around the shiftier bits, and a few blinked in surprise, whispering to their friends that this ragged woman was not what they had expected the Champion of Kirkwall to look like.  

“You were with the Inquisition?”  She had to explain just what that was to some, but in the end she got the point across: yes, she had been with the Inquisition.  

“What’s it like?” they asked, a bright warm something sparking in their eyes, “what’s the Inquisitor like?  Are they nice, cruel, soft, hard, warm, cold?”

“No, no, you don’t understand,” Hawke insisted, waving away their excited inquiries with steel lacing her words, “there’s something coming.”

“Another Blight?” was the first response.  “No, you’re wrong, we would have sensed it.”

“Not a Blight,” she pushed on, teeth gritting, “but something almost as bad.”

“Almost as bad as a Blight?” her main interrogator scoffed, a large, muscled man with scruff dotted over his sharp jawline, his nose a large bulging thing and his eyes small and hard.  “What could almost be on par with a Blight?”

“A darkspawn magister who can take over the minds of Grey Wardens, perhaps?”

That got their attention, if only for the incredulity of it all.  It took well over two hours to explain it in detail, and she tried her hardest to listen to every single idiotic question, and struggled to give answers not dripping with sarcasm.  Afterwards, they all sat in a ring, all 200 of them (more than there had been during the last Blight, but not nearly enough) and stared at the tired, grim, beaten Champion of Kirkwall who was telling them that their Calling, the event that lingered like a canker sore under their tongues, that had terrified them since the day the dreams had started again, wasn’t real.  

A few of the younger ones had known, quietly, all along, the ones who had been recruited mere months ago.  Most hadn’t been able to tell the newbie dreams from the Calling ones, and as such hadn’t been largely affected.  

The seniors weren’t as lucky.  More than a few had gone off to the Deep Roads, having no reason to believe that after all their years of service, this was not their time to go.  

After they finally dismissed her to talk amongst themselves, she collapsed in the dilapidated old room they had stuck her in, and for the tenth time that day, she wished for Fenris.  

 _You left_ , she reminded herself, rubbing her hands over her face.   _When the letter came, you could have ignored it._

And yet she knew she couldn’t have.  Many had tried to find her, mages, templars, people strangely stuck in between, she had even gotten word of (a fairly weak, she thought) attempt at communication by some Seeker who called herself Cassandra.  After all that had happened, Hawke had never trusted templars, and she trusted Seekers even less.

The hardest to ignore were attempts from companions.  She had received word of a Rivaini woman making her way through the area, gold glittering in the various piercings adorning her face and ears, a raucous grin always ready to spread across her lips.  She had spent hours each day pacing to and fro, striding toward the door decisively and striding back again with her head in her hands.  She had fought with her, ate with her, laughed with her, and Isabela was not one known for sentimental reunions.

She had run away, and it ate at her.   _What if she was in trouble?  What if she needed my help?_

Fenris was the only one able to soothe her worries, with promises that there was nothing Isabela couldn’t weasel herself out of.  A coincidence, that was all.  Chance’s attempt at humor.

But when Varric’s letter had come, she knew.  Varric was the only person who ever found her, because he was the only person she told.  She wasn’t sure why she had trusted the dwarf who only told the truth when repeatedly pressed, but she had, and when Fenris emerged from a raging downpour with a sodden piece of paper clutched in his fist, she had known this was something she couldn’t ignore.  

In the years since she had left Kirkwall, Varric had not contacted her.  Not even once.

An Inquisition, he said, a dangerous darkspawn magister, something about an Inquisitor who could walk into the Fade without dreaming, and for five raging minutes she thought he was joking.  

It was the signature that got her.  It wasn’t his name, in large, swoopy letters, or even something as trite as “hope to see you soon.”  It was a single short sentence.

“I’m sorry.”

Fenris wanted to come with her, of course.  He snarled, growled, spat that he wouldn’t, couldn’t leave her.

“No, Fenris,” she had laughed, softly, curling her hand in his threadbare shirt and resting her forehead against his.  “This time, I’m the one who’s doing the leaving.”

He had looked about ready to cry, then.  His teeth had ground together and he had cradled her face with both hands and choked out, “What if I lose you?”

“That’s what I should be asking,” she had whispered, placing one of her hands over his.  “I can’t lose you too.”

“Hawke –”

“Fenris, you’d kill yourself to protect me.  I don’t want to give you that chance.”

And so she had left, his green gaze boring into her hunched shoulders as she trudged down their narrow, country lane, their ramshackle cottage almost seeming to watch her as she paused at the top of the hill.  She wanted to turn back, to leap into Fenris’s waiting arms and pretend that the Inquisition, Corypheus, the war, none of it had ever existed.  The world paused, as her shoulders shook with unshed tears.

She had not dared to look back.

As she lay in her Weisshaupt bed, staring up at the crumbling ceiling, she almost wished she had.  

He had not laughed much, she remembered.  A snort here and there, a chuckle quickly cut off, and only once, when horribly, horribly drunk, a real, honest laugh.  

She was beginning to forget what it sounded like.  

The visit into the Fade had upset her more than she had let on.  After everyone had escaped, after Stroud had been left to die (yet another friend she had let down, for he was her friend, he was), they had all reconvened in the Skyhold tavern, nursing mugs of beer and slowly sharing what their own experiences had been like.

Hawke, for her part, had been silent.  She had decided that she hated the Fade, and everything that came out of it.  She hated everything that her sword couldn’t cut through.  

For Hawke, the creatures that kept rushing at them as they fought the Nightmare demon had been spiders.  Huge, grotesque things, with beady eyes and clicking pincers that seemed to whisper to her every single misgiving and fear she had ever had.  She had always hated spiders, ever since, back in Kirkwall, what seemed like a century ago, a poisonous one had managed to bite into a patch of skin exposed by a rip in her armor, and she had been bedridden for a week.   

Bits and pieces of the Fade had been torn-out fragments of her mansion in Kirkwall, as if they had been ripped out of the building and pasted there.  There was the kitchen, her writing desk, the mirror and dresser in the far corner of her bedroom.  Sometimes she was picking her way over grey stone and staring up at an eerily green sky, others she was padding through the soft carpet of her mother’s bedroom, towards the little sitting area where Leandra was curled up with a book, smiling at her.  

That had been bearable, though.  She had been seeing her mother’s face in her dreams for years, and at least in the Fade her face hadn’t been badly sewn onto someone else’s neck.

It only really started to get to her when the demon had mentioned Fenris.

“Fenris is going to die,” it had hissed, “just like the rest of your family.”

She had tried to cover up her distress with a sarcastic reply, but it hadn’t been enough to calm her shaking.  After that, their appearances became more frequent, Bethany lying there in the Deep Roads, dying of the taint because gods be _damned_ she hadn’t listened to her mother, Carver rushing at that ogre, a war cry tumbling from his lips and gurgling to a halt as he was crushed and flung aside, her mother, pieced together out of 20 other women like a scrapbook page, resting in her lap, her should-be-dead eyes flicking open and promising her that it wasn’t her fault.  She had almost fallen to her knees when she saw Fenris lying in a pool of blood, his eyes wide and glassy, but she had walked on, _it’s just a hallucination, no one else can see it but you, he’s alive, he’s at home_ , but all the same, the blood squelching under  her boots had felt very, very real.

She covered her eyes with her arm.  She would not allow herself to cry.       

* * *

The next Weisshaupt day dawned cold and cloudy, the chill leeching into her bones so ardently that it woke her from her slumber.  She rose from her bed shivering and angry, annoyed at the weather, the cold Weisshaupt stones, her thin blankets, her rickety bed, the fact that there wasn’t a broody tattooed elf slumbering beside her.

She stood up on shaky feet, rubbing her arms feverishly as a shiver crawled its way down her spine.  She slowly began to don her armor, hissing as the cold steel stung her skin.  She felt as though she were collecting bits of herself and sticking them back into place, the “Champion of Kirkwall” faces and mannerisms she was expected, was required to have.  The Champion of Kirkwall does not sulk, the Champion of Kirkwall does not complain about the Grey Wardens’ poor living conditions, the Champion of Kirkwall does not lay in bed all day no matter how much she may want to.  

The Champion of Kirkwall does not cry.  

She reached into her knapsack, the old, beaten-up green one she had bought from a ragtag merchant somewhere in the Hinterlands, and pulled out her red Champions’ scarf.  She hadn’t worn this thing since her battle with Meredith in Kirkwall.  It still smelled of soot, the smell drifting up into her nostrils as she affixed it to the front of her Champions’ breastplate.  She toyed with the torn and stained fabric, her metal fingers clinking together as she saw it all over again, the Chantry exploding, Anders sitting there, defeated, a man ready to die, Meredith, crystallized in red lyrium, Fenris, held in her glowing, crackling hand, his feet kicking uselessly, her metal fingers digging into the skin of his jaw as he clawed at her gauntlet, spitting something at her that Hawke couldn’t hear.

“How does it feel,” Meredith had taunted, waving Fenris around as if he were a dead goose, “knowing that I hold what is most dear to you in my hands?”

 _But he survived_ , she told herself as she saw Meredith’s sword pass straight through his abdomen, saw him crumple in a heap on the courtyard cobblestones, blood rapidly pooling around him.   _He’s alive, Hawke, you idiot, why are you remembering this now?_

“Lady Hawke?”  Her automatic response was a stammering yes, and she cursed herself for it.  If there was ever not a time to totally curl into herself, to pick apart the snags of her memories and explore every horrendous detail, this was it.    “Commander Willem has requested your presence in the solar, my lady.”

“Aye-aye, Captain,” Hawke sighed, pulling the door open and saluting tiredly to the small young woman standing in front of her, her brown eyes framed by straight blonde bangs.  “While I’m at it, where’s the mess hall?”

“Commander Willem asked for your presence immediately, my lady.”

“Tell Commander Willem that if he wants me to be gung-ho this early in the morning then he should invest in insulating his guest wing,” Hawke snapped back, startling the poor recruit into silence.  She pointed in the direction of the mess hall and Hawke nodded to her briskly before striding off.

Usually, she reflected, at about this time Fenris would either be scoffing at her impatience or snickering at her comeback.  Her pauldrons rose up over her ears as she hunched her shoulders, letting out a shuddering sigh.  

The mess hall was a rigid place, filled with sleepy Wardens and an atmosphere so tense it was almost as if each person was waiting for an axe to cleave into the backs of their heads.  Where there should have been happy chatter and bright smiles, there was only soft mumblings and tired grimaces.  

“Morning, all,” Hawke chirped, and every single pair of eyes in the room turned to her.  She had never been one for subtlety.  “Lovely morning for a stroll, isn’t it?’

Not even a chuckle.  There should’ve been at least a snort, she thought sullenly as she strode toward the bar where the porridge was being doled out.  Hawke sent a cheery smile towards the cook, a round, middle-aged woman who looked just about done with these Wardens and their mountain-top fortress.  She only scowled back and shoved a bowl into Hawke’s hands, filled with grey, lumpy porridge that looked more than a little suspicious.

And suddenly she was back in their cottage, Fenris stirring a cast-iron pot over a pleasantly crackling flame, muttering obscenities under his breath as he brought the spoon to his lips and nearly threw it away in disgust.

This really needed to stop.

* * *

“I presume you found your night enjoyable?” Commander Willem asked politely, leaning up against one of the many windowsills framing his solar.

“If by enjoyable you mean freezing my non-existent testicles off, then yes,” Hawke responded coolly, lounging on the chaise set in the center of the room, one leg crossed over the other.

“I’m terribly sorry to hear it,” the Commander responded tightly, his voice laced with a blatant desire to throw her out of the window he was leaning against.

Hawke only responded with a hum, surveying the expensive furniture and painted ceiling with a critical eye.  Her gaze drifted to the Commander, and he twitched slightly.

He was an older man, grey in both hair and beard, the lines around his mouth so deep that they were present even when he wasn’t frowning.  His armor rustled as he shifted his stance, a thousand stories and a thousand battles carved into the faint scratches adorning his bright steel breastplate.  She wondered if he kept it out of pride, or simply because he couldn’t afford another one.

“Look, Commander,” Hawke sighed, uncrossing her legs and standing up languidly.  “I’ll be honest with you.” She crossed her arms in front of her chest, gauntlets clinking together almost petulantly.  “I have a very attractive, virile elf waiting for me at home, and if it’s all the same to you I’d rather be in and out of here as soon as possible in order to reap the benefits of said virile elf.  And seeing as I have fulfilled my intended purpose, to bring you the tidings of the other Wardens, I see no reason as to why I should still be here.”

The tips of the Commander’s ears had turned bright red, and he coughed nervously, no doubt trying to dispel the image Hawke had just placed in his head.  

“M-My lady, I merely wished to see you off before you departed –”

“Commander, I’ve been around politics for far too long to be fooled by a lie that abysmal.”

“Alright, Hawke,” the Commander sighed, irritation knitting his brows together as he stepped away from the windowsill.  “I’ll be honest with _you_.  Most of our Wardens would prefer if the esteemed Champion of Kirkwall decided to house with us for a while.  It boosts morale, see, training with someone who has survived the improbable.”

“Commander, if you want to improve morale that badly –”

It was going to be a splendidly good remark, something so witty and biting that she was sure it would shock him into silence.  She never got to execute it, however, because at that exact moment the door to the solar burst open, and a young recruit burst in, his cheeks red, his breath coming in gasps.

“Commander!” he managed, wiping sweat from his forehead.  “There’s a –,” he glanced at Hawke nervously, “– a _situation_ . . . in the courtyard.”

* * *

When he got the letter, he was furious.  The second of only two letters he had ever received after leaving Kirkwall, and the first one hadn’t been very pleasant.  He had torn it open in a frenzy, reading the words that definitely were not in Hawke’s handwriting, and when he had finished it he yelled so loudly that birds half a mile away flew off in alarm.

Within fifteen minutes, he was packed and swinging himself onto their horse (that she had refused to take because “a walking traveler is less conspicuous than a riding one”).  He was already conspicuous enough as is, a white-haired, tattooed elf with a greatsword slung over his back would attract plenty of attention no matter the means of travel.  He pulled his hood up over his head as he rode, tucked his ears safely inside it, tied a scarf around his mouth, and pulled on his taloned gauntlets.  

He knew she had a duty, an obligation, she was the Champion of Kirkwall, and now, apparently, the hero of the Grey Wardens.  But damn it all he _missed_ her, missed her smile, her laugh, her idiotic teasing and sarcastic remarks.  

He urged the horse faster, the trees beginning to blur and his eyes watering as he shot down the narrow country lane, his heart beating a staccato rhythm inside his ribcage.  

He couldn’t decide if he was going to kill Hawke or Varric first.

Hawke had always been carefree, lilting, but staunch in her duties, utterly devoted to something once she set her mind to it.  But even so, not writing the letter herself stung a little.  The fact that she hadn’t taken ten minutes to pause and remember that she wasn’t alone angered him, and worried him.  Hawke had a bad habit of plodding on until she dropped, and he desperately hoped he wouldn’t find her half frozen to death somewhere on the road to Weisshaupt.

Which begged the question – where _was_ Weisshaupt?

Much farther than he thought it’d be, he discovered as he bent over an old, torn map spread out over a table in one of Gwaren’s more seedier taverns.  He and Hawke had made their latest home deep in the Brecilian Forest, just north of the Brecilian passage, and Gwaren was their only remaining connection to civilization.

It was a burnt-out husk of a town, overrun by darkspawn during the days of the Fifth Blight, due to its rather unfortunate proximity to the Kocari Wilds, and the fact that there were multiple Deep Roads tunnels that let out at its docks.  Hawke and Aveline had sailed from there to escape the Blight, mere days before it had been overrun.  Half of its houses were blackened shells, inhabited only by rats and mice, and the remaining houses weren’t much better.  The townspeople were hard and shrewd, with grim lines set around their mouths and a dagger always ready to be plucked from their waistbands.  The only children he saw were scrawny, pathetic things, huddling together in packs as they bounded around the town, their bony elbows and knees striking roughly into the ground whenever they fell.  

The town’s tavern had once been a house, and as such, it was miniscule.  The barrel-lid sign creaking over the door named it as the Rolling Skiff, and to Fenris, it was just about the best place for information that he could get.  He empathized with the Skiff’s inhabitants, the raging drunks pressing cool bottles to their temples to suppress yesterday’s hangover as they took a draught from their mug, their raucous laughter drowning out the things they wished they could say.  The bartender knew him by sight, now, and immediately started filling a mug.  

But Fenris was not there to drink.

He slammed his hands down on the bar, his gauntlets digging into the wood as he panted, “Bring me . . . a map.”  

One was quickly scrounged for in the back rooms, and it was spread before him on the table in the corner where he usually sulked, and he had accepted the mug of ale after all, taking a swig as he peered down at the old and cracked parchment.  It was outdated, but so was Weisshaupt (in his humble opinion), and he tracked multiple routes across it with a pointed finger.

He had multiple options, it turned out.

He could take a boat from Gwaren all the way around Ferelden to Cumberland, in the south of Nevarra, where he would just follow the Imperial Highway north through Nevarra and Tevinter to Vol Dorma, and find someone to direct him west to Weisshaupt from there.  The problem with that?  Boats were slow, especially ferries, and he did not have the coin to pay for a non-stop.  The journey to Cumberland would take a month, maybe more.  The Frozen Seas and Amaranthine Ocean were notoriously unpredictable, and he had seen enough ships accidentally beach themselves on Kirkwall’s shores to know how dangerous the Waking Sea was.  

He sighed angrily, downing the rest of his ale and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.  He had built up enough tolerance over the years that just a mug wasn’t going to do much, but the stress must have been getting to him.  He was feeling dizzy, his heart was pounding, and the paper was beginning to swim before his eyes.  

He growled, curling his gauntlet in his hair and chewing on his lip in thought, bending closer to the table.

He would have to take the Brecilian Passage to the South Reach River and then follow that north to Denerim, where he would take the Northern Imperial Highway to Jader, in Orlais, and from there he could get a ship to Cumberland. Cutting across the Southron Hills and the Bannorn would take too long; they were leagues and leagues of mostly untamed wilderness dotted with a few small towns here and there.  Fighting his way through that jungle still desolate from the darkspawn would sooner kill him than get him to Jader.  He grit his teeth.  He hated Denerim, he hated the Highway, and he hated Orlais, but he had a mission to accomplish.  He rolled up the map and handed it back to the bartender with a clipped thank you, and the bartender hadn’t even finished saying you’re welcome before Fenris was out the door and riding off.  

The journey would take two months, maybe three, he reflected as he directed his horse northwest.  He growled low in his throat, clenching the reins so hard that the metal of his gauntlets bit deep into the leather.  

When he finally got to Weisshaupt, he was either going to kill her, or kiss her.  Maybe both.

* * *

The Brecilian Passage was just as annoying as he remembered it.  Dalish caravans on all sides, too observant to not notice the magic crackling just under his skin, the way his hood poked out oddly on either side of his head.  As he rode on, gritting his teeth against the shouted greetings and hushed whispering, a group of children almost dragged him off his horse, yipping excitedly like dogs, and as he tore his scarf away from his mouth to snarl at them, they all gasped in unison.  Their parents immediately rushed over, ready with staffs and daggers and swords, bundling their children to their sides, but when they saw only the white markings cascading from his chin down his throat, they only sighed and asked which god his vallaslin were dedicated to.

He almost said the Dread Wolf, out of pure irritation, but knew that would get him in arrow in the back for sure.  From what he had gleaned from (purposefully) limited interactions with Merrill, the Dalish regarded the Dread Wolf, Fen’Harel, with suspicion, and even went so far as to say goodbye with the words “May the Dread Wolf never catch your scent.”

“Elgar’nan,” he muttered, bowing his head and restoring his scarf to its original position.  The lie was plausible, many of the vallaslin dedicated to Elgar’nan depicted thorns, and his wavy swooping lines of lyrium could easily pass for thorns.  Plus, Elgar’nan was the god of vengeance, and it was almost ironically fitting.

“No need to hide them, friend,” a male said, smiling kindly at him as he pried Fenris’s hand away from his mouth, and Fenris had to suppress the sudden unbearable urge to rip the man’s arm off.  “You’re among your people, friend.”

“Not for long, friend,” Fenris replied, spitting the last word out like a rotten grape.  “I must be on my way.  I thank you for your kindness.”

He rode on before the man could reply, spurring the horse so fast that the people became light brown streaks of paint in the corners of his vision.  He didn’t know how long he rode, but eventually the caravans began to dwindle, the people to thin out, and then he was alone, and there was a glimmer of water in the distance, and he slid to a stop on the banks of the South Reach River, its waters brown and muddy, the once rushing river he remembered reduced to no more than a bubbling brook by that summer’s drought.  

“ _Fasta vass_ ,” he cursed, dismounting and kicking at the water angrily.  The river was supposed to have been his food supply, a source of water, but he would have to be insane to ingest anything that came out of water so opaque.  

He crashed down onto the riverbank, his head in his hands.  He had enough food to last him two weeks, three if he was frugal.  If he rode fast enough to almost run his horse into the ground, he may just make it to Denerim to restock.  That, or go without for a few days.  Which was a considerably bad idea, considering how much energy his lyrium markings drained from him sometimes, especially in times of great stress.

He swung back onto his horse, muttering obscenities in a variety of languages, and nudged the horse into a canter.

He hoped he didn’t run the horse into the ground, he realized as he rode on.  Hawke liked this horse.

* * *

The situation, it turned out, was a great deal more ridiculous than she had expected.  She had been expecting a Venatori scout, at least, dragged out of a crevice somewhere in the surrounding mountains, but all she found were two new recruits, male, both of them, openly brawling in the courtyard.  Their fellows were jeering around them, money was being exchanged from hand to hand, and laughter rang through the air.

“What is the meaning of this?!” Commander Willem bellowed, and both boys ground to a halt, the one on top still holding the other one down by his hair.  

“J-Just a petty squabble sir,” the apparent winner admitted (rather quickly, Hawke noticed), releasing his captive and standing to attention.  

“If you two are as idiotic as to brawl in the courtyard over a petty squabble, then frankly I’m not certain why you two were ever recruited at all.”

“I was defending the Champion’s honor, Commander, sir!” the loser piped up, picking himself up off the ground and looking at Hawke with bright, child-like eyes, his cheeks tinged pink.  

“And what made you think I wasn’t perfectly capable of doing so myself?” she replied coldly, her gaze boring into his so intently that he looked away.

“W-Well, my lady, it’s just – the things he said, they – th-they were just so –”

“Kid,” Hawke sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose.  “I spent six years in Kirkwall, one of the shittiest places this world has the good graces to harbor.  I’m sure I can handle some vulgar comments from a boy who barely has any hair on his chest.”

“Both of you, back to your posts,” the Commander snapped, and the two boys scuttled off obediently.  “My endless apologies, my lady,” he added, bowing curtly.

“Oh, it’s no problem,” Hawke said tiredly, waving her hand in dismissal.  “I’ve had worse things said to me.”

If Fenris were here, he would be downright homicidal.  He would have taken the boys, both of them, by the scruffs of their necks and shook them until they flopped like dead fish, and then cast them on the ground with scathing admonishments that kept slipping from the Common Tongue to Tevene and back.  Or sometimes his glare was enough, it was hard to say.  

Suddenly the memory was there, as sharp and bitter on her tongue as anise, years ago, back in Kirkwall, when her ragtag crew had been walking back from the Hanged Man.  They had had an excursion to go on the next day, so the only one completely drunk was Isabela, but still, the light buzz of alcohol was prevalent in their lilting chatter, in the snorts and loud chuckles that echoed off of the alley walls.  

It wasn’t until the man sauntered out of the shadows, his beer-belly jiggling, his bald head shining in the moonlight, that everything ground to a halt.  The words that had tumbled out of his mouth had been so profane that Hawke didn’t care to remember them, but they had enraged Fenris to the point of madness, especially since they had been directed at her.  

Hawke had a policy of not beating up drunk people, mostly because it was useless to teach someone a lesson they would forget by the next morning.  

Fenris did not follow such a policy.

It had taken every single one of them to restrain him, but his shouted expletives and threats of extreme violence had been enough to drive the man away squealing like a piglet.  

“Easy, Broody,” Varric had said soothingly, going to lay a hand on Fenris’s arm but quickly thinking better of it.  “I’m sure she’s heard worse.”

“Have you?” he had snapped at her, and she had looked at him quizzically.

“Well, yes.  Though usually they’re perfectly sober, so I get to hit them afterwards,” she had said casually, shrugging her shoulders.

“This happens often?” he had asked incredulously, his anger seeming to dissipate just enough that Aveline saw fit to release him from her Nelson hold.  

“Of course,” she had responded, blinking at him as if he had grown a third eye.  “I’m a woman.”

In those few moments she had forgotten that Fenris was not used to cities like this, where the peasants did not live in fear of a noble’s whip, where politeness had well and truly died literal ages ago.  

“If a man had said that in Minrathous, drunk or otherwise, he would have been given forty lashes,” Fenris had said, his shoulders rolling involuntarily.  Obviously the thought of lashes of any number was uncomfortably familiar.  

“You’re not in Minrathous anymore, bud,” Varric had sighed sympathetically.  “Although, honestly, I couldn’t tell you where the better place to be is.”

Fenris had looked at her, then, his expression unreadable, his hands clenching and unclenching into fists, until finally he had strode off, spitting, “ _Vishante kaffas_ ” as he went.  

Fenris had always been prickly when it came to insults directed at her.    
“I can have them whipped, if you like,” said Commander Willem, and her refusal was sharper and more immediate than intended.  

“No,” she repeated with a sigh, running a hand through her hair.  “Nothing so drastic.”  The scars had been faint, nearly indistinguishable from the white lines already curling across the muscles of his back.  She had run her finger over them, lightly, and he had shuddered.  “Just a word will suffice.”

The Commander nodded.  “At your command, my lady.”

* * *

He did not know how he had gone three years voluntarily keeping himself away from her.  It had been just over a month since her departure, and the way her lips had trembled when she said goodbye still stung at the back of his throat like cheap whiskey.  

The journey up the South Reach River was grueling.  It was days and days of following the gurgling brown stream as it meandered through the outskirts of the Brecilian Forest, following its every twist and bend for fear of losing it in a forest known for lost travelers.  

It took two weeks, but finally, finally, he sighted Dragon’s Peak in the distance, the towering precipice that had been the site of the First Blight’s final battle.  He urged the horse faster, the poor, tired thing, skirted west around the Mountain, and after two more days of a grumbling stomach and his horse nearly collapsing from exertion, he was standing in the middle of Denerim’s marketplace, his breath hot against his face underneath his scarf, his gaze flicking to the Alienage’s gate.  

He was horribly conspicuous, and he knew it.  A hooded traveler with a scarf over his face and wispy white bangs falling over unusually green eyes leading a horse that looked far too well-groomed to pass for a peasant’s.  Not to mention the giant greatsword slung over shoulders that looked too narrow to lift it.  

It only took a few merchants squabbling around him before the city guard finally took notice.  They banged and crashed and rustled up to him, their garish, overly-polished armor glinting annoyingly in the sunlight as they formed a half-circle around him.  The one in the center with the large feather plume stuck into his helmet, Orlesian-style (Fenris wouldn’t have been surprised if he was unaware of that fact), shouted, “Where go you, traveler?  Pardon my boldness, but you seem . . . misplaced in a city like this.”

Fenris’ mind reeled, searching for something, anything to get him out of this, and somehow, he recalled the elf, Zevran, who he had met with Hawke in Kirkwall.  He tried to recall the way the elf’s Antivan accent had lilted and rolled, and wondered if the Crows were still a feared organization in this city.

“My friend,” he began congenially, but friendliness was something he was notoriously bad at, and it came out stiff and jilted.  He almost cursed, and tried to make his tongue stop doing the samba.   _His accent flowed_ , he remembered, _rolled off of the tongue._  “A Crow’s business is a Crow’s, is it not?”

The accompanying soldiers gulped and looked to each other nervously, but the captain only narrowed his eyes further and leaned in for a closer look.

“Seems to me most Crows are more . . . subtle when doing their . . . business.  How are you supposed to get your pay if you’re swaggering around carrying a sword taller than you are?” the captain drawled, his eyes darting to Fenris’ scarf, his gauntleted hands twitching.  

“Who said I was the one collecting the pay?” Fenris asked, low and dangerously, the accent slipping for a half second.  He desperately hoped the guard was too stupid to notice.

“Maybe we better let him go, Captain,” one of the other soldiers piped up, looking Fenris up and down and taking a half-step backwards.  “Crossing a Crow’s horrible bad buck.”

The captain studied Fenris for a few seconds longer, before sighing and signaling to his men.  “You get off this time, Crow,” he barked.  “Just make sure I don’t catch you with blood on your hands.”

Fenris only nodded, and held back his sigh of relief as the guards shuffled off.

Later that night, he was huddled in the Gnawed Noble Tavern, sandwiched in a corner and cradling a mug of ale to his chest like a lifeline. He was too worn for this tavern, too dirty, but he could not have entered the Alienage if he tried.  Dalish elves irritated him, yes, what with their insistence on making him one of them, but the city elves he pitied.  They were a derelict, tired group, wearing rags of varying shades of brown and carrying horrors tucked close to the corners of their mouths.  They always watched him, warily, when he passed by, hands twitching at their belts, because he looked too noble, too pristine, a result of many years serving a too noble, too pristine master.  His shoulders were not hunched enough, his head not bowed far enough, his hands too steady by his sides.  The Alienage elves were always on edge, ready at a moment’s notice to spring into action like a wild animal.  Their spontaneity and pure violent impulse to claw themselves out of trouble kept people away from them.  Fenris was different. His strength was felt in the smoothness of his gait, the high rigidity of his shoulders, the piercing sharpness of his eyes.  It was like rabid coyotes circling a hunting dog; they were like children given sharpened sticks and shoved out into the world, while he was bred purely for power, for slaughter.

He hated himself for it.  

He placed his mug down gently and waved the bartender over for another round.  He could afford to get drunk tonight, he had already wheedled a tiny attic room out of the innkeeper across the road.  His only desire was to drink until he could no longer remember the touch of her hands on his skin.  

The bartender brought the mug over, reluctantly, almost, and as he was setting down, asked, “Hope you don’t mind me asking, sir, but what’s your name?”

He could not say Fenris.  It was too foreign, too distinctly elven, and if his hooked elf nose had not already given him away, the sound of lilting elven syllables cascading through the rough Fereldan air would.  

He said Leto before any other thought could cross his mind.  Practically, it worked.  Although distinctly Tevinter, there were hundreds of Letos, human and elf alike.  Something to warrant curiosity, but hopefully not suspicion.

But when he said it, he _felt_ something, remembered; black hair falling around his face as it was clipped away by soft, steady hands, a laughing smile, red bangs falling in front of eyes the exact same shade as his, his skin, dotted with cuts and bruises and everything but lyrium, a voice, a motherly voice, a high, tinny, young girl’s voice, saying it, happily, sadly, angrily, Leto Leto Leto _Leto_ – !

“Strange name,” the bartender commented, and Fenris was violently thrust out of a world of olive trees and the smell of baking yeast into one of rough wooden tables, musty ale, and a bartender leaning over him, looking at him quizzically.

“Perhaps,” Fenris responded, trying to hide his shaking by taking a swig from his mug. He had pulled his scarf down to just below his lips, low enough that he could drink but high enough to still conceal his markings. He didn’t bother to keep up the Antivan accent, Leto sounded too Tevinter for it to pass.

“You from Tevinter?” was the second question.  He nodded in response, his face still half-buried in his mug.  He lowered it reluctantly, staring at the bartender shrewdly.  “Where are you going?” was the third.  

He was far too tired to come up with anything remotely convincing.  “I’m looking for my wife.”

“She run off on you?” the bartender asked, taking a seat across from Fenris and interlacing his fingers together in front of him.  

Fenris snorted, taking another swig.  “Almost.  She’s . . . in the military. She was sent to be stationed in the Anderfels”

The bartender whistled in awe, tipping his chair back and resting his hands on his stomach.  “She’s one lucky gal.”  Fenris looked up at him curiously.  “To have a husband who loves her so much that he’s willing to trek across half the continent just to see her again.”

“Are all bartenders this poetic?” Fenris half-chuckled into his mug.  

“Get enough flowery nobles through your door and pretty soon you’re spouting poetry out your ears,” the bartender sighed, and reached over to clap Fenris on the shoulder.  “Good luck with your wife, friend.”

It was the very first time in his extremely limited memory that someone other than Hawke had touched him and he hadn’t felt the urge to rip part of them off.  

* * *

Venatori spies were captured just east of Weisshaupt two weeks later.  They were pathetic things, two foot soldiers by the looks of it, who spat curses in Tevene at their captors with every breath they took.  Hawke really wished she had had Fenris give her lessons in the language, she only understood bits and pieces of what they were saying, mostly “Corypheus” because, obviously, but also “destroy,” “shit,” and “fuck,” which coincidentally happened to be Fenris’ favorite words.  

“What do you suggest we do with them, my lady?” Commander Willem asked as they strolled out from the dungeons, the sunlight making her eyes burn.  

“Might as well keep them here,” Hawke sighed.  “They’ll either talk or they won’t, it doesn’t really matter.  We all know what they’re here for.”

The Commander exhaled, long and slow, massaging his brow with one hand.  “I’ll start preparing for siege.”

“Well, Commander,” Hawke said, watching the sky carefully, “I fear it’s already too late for that.”

She pointed.  

There was smoke, lots of it, choking out the blue of the mountaintop sky and slowly beginning to curl towards Weisshaupt, crooking its long wispy fingers, as if to beckon, or warn, or both.  

The Commander swore, loudly, but all Hawke heard was the blood rushing in her ears.  Even after years of battles, the beginnings always felt like this.  Tense, apprehensive, like a bard’s fingers waiting to pluck a harp string.  

The only difference now, though, was that she did not have any of her companions to fight with her.  The thought hit her suddenly, brutally, like a wagon going full speed.  The Wardens were allies, people she would fight beside and get injured protecting, but they were not _comrades_.  They were not people she had spent years fighting with, laughing with, loving with.  

She was alone.  Completely and utterly alone.  Her chest hadn’t felt this heavy since the night her mother had died, and she had the sudden unbearable urge to claw her breastplate off, it was heavy, too heavy, she was suffocating under its weight –

The first stone hit the castle with a resounding crash.  

“Stones?” Hawke sighed over the sounds of rubble crashing into the courtyard.  “They have an army of highly trained Tevinter magisters and they throw _stones_?”

She unsheathed her greatsword from her back, testing the weight in her palm.  It had been a parting gift from the Inquisitor, a large sharply pointed blade found in the Temple of Mythal, dubbed Certainty, that eerily resembled the red lyrium sword Meredith had wielded in Kirkwall.  

“Fitting,” the Inquisitor had said, an amused twinkle glinting in their eyes, “that you should cause destruction with the sword of the one who caused yours.” Solas, Skyhold’s resident apostate (a title that Hawke now had a deep, if not always acknowledged, mistrust of) had said something about it being “reborn in arcane energies somehow elven and Tevinter and Blight intertwined.”  She had absolutely no idea what that meant, but none of it sounded pleasant.  She just hoped her inexperience with the thing wouldn’t get her killed.

She jogged across the courtyard, stance already shifting into the one once adopted near-daily in Kirkwall, her shoulder dipping, her arm muscles flexing, preparing to lift and swing and cleave.  They were already pouring in through the gate as stones kept flying overhead, brandishing swords and shields and staffs.  She could see the glow of glyphs being cast on the ground, could feel the crackle of magic at the back of her neck as one appeared right in front of her.  She slid around it on the balls of her feet, watching as a group of four soldiers rushed towards her, thinking to catch her off-balance.

They couldn’t have been more wrong.  

She corrected her stance with almost inhuman speed, swinging her sword so suddenly that it took all four of them out with a spray of blood that kissed the exposed bits of her face.  

She was already on to the next as the Wardens rushed out to join her, their voices rising in a rallying cry, and suddenly Fenris was beside her, wielding the Blade of Mercy she had given him, staring at the tide of enemies and commenting with a lazy smirk, “Shall we end this quickly?”

The thought brought her comfort, even though she knew it wasn’t practical or even sane to be hallucinating on a battlefield ( _playing pretend_ made it sound as though it was voluntary, even though it was), and as she cut down another enemy she could hear him, “Watch the shadows!”  

And true enough, a Brute leapt for her, giant warhammer glinting dully in the choked-out mountain sunshine, but the point of Certainty was at his gorget before he could swing.  The man skewered himself on her blade, and she flicked him off with no more than a second glance.  

“That one shall not rise again,” he said with a flash of teeth, and the Venatori she was fighting turned into bandits, the grey stone of Weisshaupt into the faded yellow plaster of Kirkwall.  

The next bandit – Venatori _Venatori_ – went down in the span of a single breath, and Isabela’s knives were flashing, Merrill’s magic crackling, Varric’s crossbow bolts whistling.

A choked sob rose in her throat as she blinked the blood out of her eyes.

 _It’s true, then,_ she reflected as she spun and chopped and spun again, _you never really know when life is good until it’s not._

A spear caught her on the arm and she swore, in Tevene, _Tevene_ , “Venhedis!” and a dozen pairs of eyes looked up at her, incredulous, before she cut them all down.

Blood, so much blood and she wasn’t even wearing a damned helmet, she could get an arrow in the eye or a crossbolt to the face and that would be it.  She plucked one off of a body as she ran by, snapping the neck of it in the process as she wrenched the piece of metal off and stuffed it on her head.  It smelled of sweat and was a little too small, the nosepiece biting into her skin, but too small was better than too large.  

There was no end to them. They kept rushing through the gates, one after the other, and where one fell two more popped up.  Her battle-fogged mind reeled, her eyes flicking to the gates, the middle of them burst out by a long-forgotten battering ram, to the empty battlements, where a cow-sized stone lay amidst a nest of rubble.

“Bruiser, Horman, Offer, to me!” she cried, and the three burliest Wardens looked up, nodded, and cut their way towards her as she pushed her way backwards through the Wardens.

“What’s the plan, Captain?” Bruiser shouted into her ear, knocking a Venatori out of his way with the ease of someone waving away a fly.  

“We’re going to push that rock in front of the gate!” she yelled back, gesturing to it.  “It should be large enough to choke them off!”

“I like the way you think, Boss!” Offer laughed, and the similarity of his voice to the Iron Bull’s, the Inquisition’s large Qunari mercenary, was uncanny.  

They managed to get up onto the battlements with virtually no resistance, and were running over the raging cacophony of battle in no time.  All four of them braced themselves against the rock, and Hawke shouted, “Push!”

The rock crept forward half an inch, the rubble beneath it cracking and breaking. A puff of smoke exploded in the midst of the battlefield, something she should have recognized, something she had seen Isabela disappear into a hundred thousand times, but she was too busy trying not to break her back.  

“Again!” she cried, her yell obscuring the creaking of unseen footfalls on the wooden stairs leading up to them.  The rock was on the edge now, dangerously close, Bruiser and Offer were sweating profusely, and Horman looked about ready to pass out.

“Once more!”

She pushed until her vision popped with black spots; something cracked to her left and Bruiser hissed in pain.

Knives flashed above her.

The rock fell, and so did she.  

* * *

The Imperial Highway was a mess.  It had taken him two weeks to get from Denerim to Gherlen’s Pass, and the road had not become any less crowded the closer he came to Orlais.  In fact, it seemed to have become more congested.  He neither did nor wanted to know what had caused this mass exodus, but whatever it was, he would probably still be cursing it well into old age.  

He was stuck in the midst of a wagon train carting fish to Val Royeaux, and kept having to restrain his gag reflex.  Fish repulsed him as is, but the smell of them slowly rotting in the Fereldan sun made him want to vomit.  

He spurred his horse forward, managing to circumvent the vanguard of the fish train, and, just his luck, ended up behind a wagon full of small children.  

They were loud, the gremlins, and pointed at him and whispered to each other as he passed.

“Remind me never to have children,” he growled to himself, weaving his way between the wagons as best he could, ignoring the occasional curse or shout of protest as he veered particularly close to a traveler on foot.

Gherlen’s Pass was narrow, and steep.  His horse was well lathered and panting, but he pushed it onwards nonetheless.  The border loomed closer with each step, and with it Jader, and passage to Cumberland, to Nevarra, to Tevinter, to Hawke.

Slowly the amount of people around him speaking the Common Tongue began to decrease, and suddenly he was cursing his basic understanding of Orlesian.

 _“Voyez-vous cet elfe?”_ Do you see that elf?

 _“Tu es fou, il n'est pas un elfe.”_  You’re crazy, he’s not an elf.

 _“Non, non, tu ne vois pas comment son capot bombé sur les côtés?”_  No, no, don’t you see the way his hood bulges at the sides?

He could see them, two low-ranking nobles, maybe, for no Orlesian above gentleman’s status would travel the Imperial Highway on horseback.  Usually Fenris would have dismissed such idle chatter, but Orlesians were known for their loose lips.

He spurred his horse forward, whispering soothing words as it huffed and groaned with the extra exertion.  He drew level with the two Orlesian men, who daintily turned their faces away, their masks glinting in the fitful sunshine.  

 _“Attention à vos mots, messieurs.  Vous ne savez jamais qui écoute.”_  Watch your words, gentlemen.  You never know who is listening.

He rode onward, only able to catch two of the parting words they left him, _“connard”_ and _“lapin.”_

Sometimes he resented Danarius for ensuring he was able to hold conversations in every single language that roamed the continent.

That was not one of those times.

* * *

Jader reminded him too much of Kirkwall.

It was smaller, substantially so, and yet it had that same atmosphere, salt air pricking at the back of his throat, the smell of freshly-caught fish steaming in the sun (he was already feeling nauseous), that sense of tautness, like a quivering bowstring.  The people trudged through the wind-scoured streets with arrows pincushioned into their spines, small ones, large ones, crimes they had only heard through the whispered words of another and ones that caused condolences to pile around their feet.  It was much like Kirkwall in the fact that it was gritty, unkempt, like a widow left only with her grief in the large echoing halls of her once lively home.  It festered with small children running about with dirt and who knows what else smeared over their faces, dressed all in rags and whooping in a strange mix of Fereldan and Orlesian and words only they understood.

He walked his horse through the town slowly, keeping close watch of the beggars that eyed him too closely, resisting the urge to pat to make sure his coin purse was still there, because then they would know.  He was uncomfortably aware of the greatsword on his back, aware of their frightened, awed glances, from the sword to his slight frame and back.

He could see the Waking Sea, winking blue and bright and sparkling in between the grey buildings, ships rolling tantalizingly on the whitecaps that crashed monotonously to shore.

He urged the horse to a trot (he should give it a name, Hawke would like that) refusing to give the people filtering into the streets a second glance as the horse’s hooves clattered on the cobblestones, because he felt for them, he had been them, he had walked cobblestoned streets on bare, blistered feet and eyed every traveler on a horse who seemed a bit too stupid for his own good.  He had reached out, fingers darting and snatching like hummingbirds, filching three gold pieces, sometimes four, a whole pouch once.  Enough to have fed him for a week, more if he was careful (he never was).  

He almost threw a few coins behind him, but thought better of it, he was low on funds as it was, and the rush of starved, animalistic people scrabbling for money would most likely result in someone getting trampled to death.  

All he had to do was follow the smell of fish.  

After around half an hour of stubbornly refusing to ask for directions, he emerged onto the docks, his horse nickering nervously as a wave broke on shore.  He scanned up and down the piers, looking for a ship big enough to carry a person but small enough to be cheap.  There was a small merchant’s sloop bobbing a little ways down, a tall grizzled sea captain standing at its helm, conversing irritably with a man on the docks below.  

Both men looked up as Fenris clattered toward them, their eyes taking in his hood, his scarf, the white hair falling in front of his eyes, the greatsword on his back.

He spoke before they could, “I need passage to Cumberland.”

The man on the docks laughed, a loud, cruel sound that brought back nasty images of sneering magisters with their long, pinching fingers.  One of Fenris’ ears twitched involuntarily.

But the man on the sloop only smiled, taking his pipe out of his mouth to expose two rows of yellow rotten teeth.  “Well, seems as though you came just in time.  I’ve just freed up a space.”

The man on the docks choked, but the captain beckoned Fenris closer, throwing a rickety gangplank towards him.  It landed with a loud clatter, and his horse shied away with an indignant snort.     

* * *

He didn’t spend much time in Cumberland, nor did he want to.  The city had a strict no-weapons policy, especially around the wealthier districts, and so the captain of the merchant sloop, Gallin, snuck him in under cover of darkness, bidding him a hasty goodbye just barely audible over the waves breaking on the docks.

Halfway through creeping down an alley, wincing at every clink and clop of the horse’s hooves (maybe he would name it after the captain, it was just as grizzled-looking now), he decided that he had had enough.  He rocketed full speed through Cumberland, the horse heaving and panting beneath him, past armed guards who started when they heard him approaching but weren’t able to get a word out before he was gone.  The College of Magi loomed large and imposing above him, the Sun Dome dull in the cloudless night sky.  The windows were all dark, the courtyard filled with debris, its statues of heroes of old chipped and cracking.

The College had been overrun by anti-Circle mages half a year ago, or so he had heard, and so far not a single mage had returned to it.  The thought filled him with a sense of sickly pride, the familiar acid-oozing sensation he had felt so often in Kirkwall, whenever he saw Anders, whenever a mage was set to rights (Fenris’ rights, anyways).  It was not a nice feeling, this ill, acid pride, but it was like alcohol.  He did not subject himself to it because it left a nice taste in his mouth; rather, it left such a horrid one that, for a time, he was able to block out everything else.

His drinking had slowed after Kirkwall.  Now, he had less to forget, and more to remember.  

That, and he was afraid the alcohol would muddy the way he remembered the quirk of her smile.

The land between Cumberland and Nevarra (the city, capital of Nevarra the country, which Fenris never quite understood) was scarcely populated, the only settlements tucked close to the Highway like leeches, feeding off of the slow moving travelers and filching from wagon trains that passed through.  

He crossed the bridge over the last dying leg of the Minanter River, and the Silent Plains stretched out before him, the border with Tevinter curling across the horizon, an invisible line forever seared in his mind’s eye.  That border had once been the goal, the ultimate, the thing he had striven for for years and years on end.  And now he was going back, stepping foot into the homeland (but can you call someplace you hate a home?) that he had made a vow he would never return to.  The last time he had crossed that border, he had been bloody, and small, curled into himself like a metal spring, clutching the last dregs of himself to his chest with shaky hands stained with Fog Warrior blood.  His feet had left red imprints in the sand, because even a lifetime’s worth of callouses could not best the jagged stones that littered the Silent Plain’s hills.  That was why it had been called the Silent Plains, he had been told, because the minute someone disturbed the tranquil, they would trip on nothing and a rock would end up buried an inch deep in their throat.

For a wild, feverish moment, he wondered if maybe, just possibly, he was being hunted.  If maybe, just maybe, he had been led to this exact spot so they could take him and bind him and step on him and return him to a life that still gave him nightmares that woke him in a cold sweat.  His ears started to twitch, the memory of cruel fingers pinching and twisting them mercilessly making him roll his shoulders, as if to shrug the reminiscence off like water.  

He was definitely imagining the glimmer of Tevinter steel in the distance, but that didn't make it any better.

* * *

Vol Dorma was too close to Minrathous for comfort.  It was barely larger than the ruins of Gwaren, the only significance it could have possibly garnered in its acquisition of a name and spot on the map earned by its convenient proximity to Weisshaupt.  In the “days of old” the wild griffon-riding Grey Wardens had bunked in Vol Dorma on their way to and from their fortress, sharing drinks in the local pub and supposedly tying up their griffons to the horse post outside, because really, what else were they to do with it?

He asked an old woman at a flower shop for directions to Weisshaupt and she looked at him queerly, her eyes taking in his tired, travel-worn demeanor, and pointed him in the direction of a faded dirt road winding away from the east side of town like a meandering river towards the far-off blue-grey peaks of the Anderfels.

He thanked her quietly, bought a few provisions in the scant marketplace, and was on his way before the merchant who had been staring at his markings a little too intently could get any ideas.

He had been told Weisshaupt was located on a butte called Broken Tooth, but seeing as the Anderfels was unfortunately lacking in street signs, he guessed he would just have to watch for the giant towering fortress looming in the distance.  Or something like that, because honestly, as if it was going to be hard to miss.

But amidst all the anxiety of returning to the home of his long-dead master (dead dead dead dead _dead_ , if he kept saying it, it would feel true), amidst the way his hands kept shaking and his teeth kept gritting, there was happiness, of all things, _excitement_ , even.  Oh Maker, how was he going to just walk in there?  Would he knock on the gate and shout at the top of his lungs for the Champion of Kirkwall, and wait for her to tell the guards that he wasn’t, in fact, crazy?  How would she respond when she saw him?  Would she smile, would she sigh, would she scold him because _dammit Fenris I told you that I can’t let anything happen to you._

His thoughts swam around each other like fish in a tank, and he groaned aloud, almost startling his horse down the side of the steep incline he was currently picking his way across.

It was only after hours of walking, when he stood atop a ridge looking down on the smoking ruins of a fortress, _the_ fortress, that all thought stopped.

* * *

_“No!  I won’t allow it!”_

Oh no.  Was she in trouble again?  Surely she must have done something, and by the agonized tone of his voice, something utterly terrible.  What, though?

Honestly, she couldn’t remember. All she knew was that her stomach was hurting.  Quite a lot, actually.  She wondered what she had eaten this time.  And now that she thought about it, her head was hurting, too, and her arms, legs, back, neck, everything was just a dull ache.  

Was she in Anders’ clinic, after the Arishok battle?  She hadn’t known this sort of everywhere-pain since then.  But no, it couldn’t be, she couldn’t smell any cats.  

_“Let me in, damn you!”_

In?  In where?  Anders always let Fenris into his clinic, no matter how much he grumbled.  Maybe it was the way he flashed those puppy eyes he kept insisting he didn’t have, or maybe he just growled loudly enough.  But no, this wasn’t Anders’ clinic, the thing she was laying on was far too soft for Anders’ wooden examination table, there wasn’t a warm feline curled up on her chest.  So . . . where?

She remembered a cloud of smoke, now, and Isabela disappearing into it with a flash of teeth and a wink, except it wasn’t Isabela, they were dressed in shining steel, brandishing twin daggers of ink-black onyx, everything but their eyes covered with a scarf embroidered with a pair of serpents, one large, one small, coiled around each other.

Bruser, Horman, Offer, rock.  Rock?  What rock?

Fitful sun, curling smoke, a brute.  Now she was beginning to sound like Cole, that little spirit-boy from the Inquisition.

There was something . . . something with a V, it was important, she knew it was, and a Cory-phi – Cory-fish – Cory-phi-phus? – and there she was in Skyhold’s tavern, downing a pint with a blonde elf like none she had ever met, who belched and swore and made lewd gestures at every opportunity, who wore shoes and shot better than templars who had been training for two decades.

Sera, her name was Sera.

V, V, what was the V?

There was Vivienne, the Orlesian lord’s mistress, master of The Game, orchestrator of all the Inquisition’s fancier parties.  Hawke had liked her, she remembered, if less for her views and more for the cold steel in her eyes and the way she carried herself as if she did not have the weight of so much on her shoulders.

V, V, Varric?  Ah, yes, Varric, with the sad down-turned eyes and lazy, defeated smile, patting her on the arm and telling her that Bianca would miss her, too.

_“She’s my wife, my wife, dammit!”_

Was she married?  She wondered what the ceremony had been like, she didn’t remember her mother being there –

Oh, there it was, her mother’s poorly sewn-on head, Meredith crystallizing, her last scream gurgling to a halt as red lyrium twisted through her windpipe, scratchy hoods pulled up over tense shoulders as everyone split up for the last time, the pad of bare feet as he followed her, dutifully, silently, his presence more soothing than she would ever admit, the quiet days roaming around Thedas, their most recent respite in the Brecilian Forest, the letter, the Inquisitor, the Fade –

Venatori. Venatori Venatori _Venatori_ – how could she have forgotten?

Something slammed, close, uncomfortably close, and the Champion of Kirkwall’s instincts had her up and out of bed before her eyes had even opened all the way.

He was there.  

In the doorway, panting, his face stained with dirt, his hand clawing into the doorframe for support, and one of the plates on his finger-talons was missing.  

His eyes went to the bandages cinching her stomach and oh she _remembered_ , the assassin, blades flashing down, her Champion of Kirkwall instincts bidding her step back out of range, except of course, there was nothing to step back to.  The knives must have glanced her, far shallower than intended, but she was still fuzzy on how she had survived a fall from the battlements.

She smiled at him, and he broke.

He rushed toward her and wrapped her up in a kiss and she suddenly became too exhausted to stand, she sagged in his grip and he just clutched her all the harder, and when he finally pulled away he shoved her back into her sick bed, placing a small kiss to her forehead, and lo and behold, the Champion of Kirkwall was crying.

Sobbing, actually, like a small child, and she clutched his steel breastplate and buried her face in his shoulder and sobbed, sobbed away all the mornings when she had woken up feeling cold, all the times she had turned to tell him something and been greeted by silence.

He was crying, too, and that made her laugh.

He looked at her angrily, lips twisting, preparing for a scathing remark, but she got there first, “Why are you crying?  You never cry.”

“They told me you almost died,” he snapped, shaking her shoulders slightly.  

“Did I?” she said casually, placing her hands on the sides of his face.  “Well, good thing I didn’t shuffle off the mortal coil, or else I wouldn’t have been able to see your idiot face again.  Didn’t I tell you not to follow?”

“Varric sent a letter,” he mumbled, leaning his forehead against hers.

“Bastard,” she sighed.  “This was just going to be a minor delay.”

“I love you,” he murmured, and she was crying again.

“Stupid,” she choked, roping him in for another kiss, not that he seemed to object.  “Why else would you have come all this way?  I love you, too, you stupid fucking _idiot_ what if you had _died_ –”

“I feel as if I should be the one asking that question,” he quipped, and she snorted.

“Is this any way to treat your wife who has just resurfaced from the brink of oblivion?”

“I seem to recall a particular time in which –”

“Shut up.”

* * *

As it was told, the Champion of Kirkwall had saved (some of) Weisshaupt with her brilliant plan of blocking the gates with a boulder from the ramparts.  She had been knocked off of the ramparts by a Venatori assassin, and only the corpses of her fallen comrades had saved her from a certain splatter-y death on the courtyard cobblestones.  

Since then, the Southern Wardens had declared open war on the Wardens of Weisshaupt, and all news from the snowy mountaintop fortress ceased soon after.

The Champion had once again disappeared.

* * *

“Are you going to write him?”

“Naturally.  I have to tell at least _one_ person, so they’ll know who to call to collect the corpses.”

“Not funny, Hawke.”

“Really?  I thought it was the jolliest thing either of us has said all day.”

“Are you going to mail the letter or not?”

“Well, if you’re so _opposed_ to it, then I suppose I could stand in front of this post-box for a few more minutes and we could share a lengthy debate –”

“Hawke.”

A sigh, “Fine, fine, you’re no fun.  One day I will force you to appreciate the finer arts of Fereldan discourse.”

“I had assumed Fereldan discourse was whoever passed out on the pub floor first.”

“Oh, please, as if I wasn’t lugging your surprisingly heavy ass off of your mansion floor every other night –”

“I’m not heavy.”

“You are for a young, fragile maiden such as myself.”

A derisive snort, a twist of the lips, “You once carried me into battle over your shoulder.”

“That was a wonderful diversion tactic and you will never convince me otherwise.”

A few moments of silence, a subtle, maybe-not-really unintentional brush of fingers, the soft pad of bare feet and the heavier clunk of steel boots echoing down the quiet road.  

“Hawke.”

“Mmm?” she turned to him, her eyes shining, her arm still hammocked in a sling, her gait still off from her broken fibula.  

“Let’s disappear for good this time.”  

“But, Fenris, whatever will I do if the world as we know it needs saving from yet another indescribable horror?”

“Stay in bed for once.”

A flash of teeth, a slow-building laugh that soon enough rang all around them.  She linked her arm with his, and for once he didn’t object.  He kissed the side of her head, and she snorted, which earned her a sharp elven elbow in the side.  She sighed, and smiled at him, and even after all these years it still made his stomach do a somersault.

“A perfectly reasonable request, I think.”

**Author's Note:**

> here it is, 21 pages of my rampant desire for more fenris/hawke content in my life.  
> dear god this required so much research do you even know how much time i spent on the dragon age wiki


End file.
